


motherless child

by SimpleNexus (PreludeInZ)



Category: Warframe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/SimpleNexus
Summary: Mainly concerning a lakeshore, and an attempted assassination thereupon.





	1. Chapter 1

The stones strike the surface of the water, but do not skip, because a fatherless child is not taught to skip stones.

A father (not _his_ father) stands behind him on the lakeshore, a few paces back, eyelessly watching the hills that rise around them, bathed in late afternoon light. His hand rests lightly on the hilt of the blade, unexalted at his side, and in the rare moments when he isn’t watching the hills, he watches the child who isn’t his.

The stones strike the water as though in anger, as though the boy who throws them wouldn’t _want_ them to skip, even if he knew how to skip them. Pain and fear and helpless, childish rage find their expression in the stones he throws at the surface, at being orphaned yet again.

But Natah was never a mother. The Tenno cannot be a child. And Umbra is no longer a father, though those same feelings still stir from deep within him, as he watches the boy on the lakeshore.

“The worst part is the way he thinks he’s  _helping_!”

Another stone strikes the water.

It’s not the first thing he’s said, but it’s the first proper outburst, the Tenno’s voice rising and cracking slightly with emotion, revealing the tantrum for what it is. He’s been ranting quietly to himself ever since he started throwing stones. His words have mostly been lost on the wind, mutterings caught on the breeze and blown to all corners of the Plains of Eidolon, though Umbra has caught and heard every one of them, and the anger and pain that they carry.

“Like he thinks I _need_ her, like I _ever_ needed her, because I didn’t and I _don’t_!”

Now he shouts loud enough that Umbra lifts his head slightly, alive and aware of his own volition. Unlike the puppets that fill the Orbiter, waiting obediently high above the surface of the Earth, and the mad, tragic Cephalon who cannot hear what’s being shouted about him, and the form he has chosen to synthesize as he passes on alerts and directives from all corners of the Origin system. As though he’s helping.

Lately the Operator has responded to fewer and fewer of these. Lately, he has instead chosen to spend his time on Earth, in Cetus or the plains around it, and in the flesh, rather than hidden away within the Somatic Link, endlessly dreaming.

And lately, perhaps for lack of anyone better—because he has been fatherless for millennia, and motherless for months now—he chooses Umbra’s company.

Another warframe would stand empty and dead on the shore behind him, an empty cage without a bird within. Another warframe would not wait or watch or guard the Tenno’s flank, or listen as he throws a tantrum on the shore of Gara Toht lake, and disturbs stones from where they’ve rested for millennia, to make ripples upon the water that last only moments.

“I found something to do _without_ her. I found my _own_ mission. And I’m doing it— _we’re_ doing it— _without_ her. And without _him_ , pretending to be _her_.”

The Operator is only mad because he’s desperately lonely. And while it’s obvious that the Operator is mad, the only reason Umbra knows the Operator is lonely is because there’s only room for one mind within a warframe, and when the Tenno seizes control of Excalibur Umbra, Transference flows both ways. And the pair of them flow together, kindred in ways beyond blood and flesh.

And so Umbra prefers to stand on the shore at the Operator’s back, watching him rage impotently at the emptiness of his life without the Lotus. Umbra has borne fathomless rage and unimaginable pain and boundless grief across the course of countless centuries—and yet the quiet, hidden pain of a motherless child, forlorn and lost in an uncaring universe, seems somehow to wound him anew.

Another stone strikes the surface of the lake, and then falls, silent and meaningless, into its depths.


	2. Chapter 2

Rank and file, by and large, the Grineer do not know that one of their queens is dead. The queens are beloved, Elder and Younger, and at the news of one’s death, there would be chaos and despair, and the fear and terror inspired by the Grineer command is nothing compared to the fanatical love and devotion shown to the Grineer Queens, false though they are. Or were, for the Elder is dead, assassinated by a lone Tenno, assisted by the treacherous Teshin Dax.

The Worm Queen maintains the fiction that her sister is merely fallen ill, and that the most elite of their forces gather Kuva to heal her. This lends a fanaticism to the ground troops, beyond the genetically engineered and inborn loyalty to the queens, for they know only too well what it’s like to sicken and die, withering and wasting into death, and would do anything to spare their beloved queen her suffering.

If the lie rankles within the ranks of the Grineer command, they cannot fault the fervor it spurs in their troops. If the truth is that the Elder Queen is dead, and that it’s only the madness of grief that drives her sister to scour the system for Kuva—then there is leverage to be gained by winning her favour. Councillor Vay-Hek seeds the plains with more Ghouls than ever, and hopes to convince his remaining queen that the Orokin Temple behind the walls of Cetus contains all the Kuva she could desire.

To that end, his spies have sought out and traced the Tenno responsible for the assassination. By some cosmic serendipity, it lately seems drawn to Cetus and the plains around it, and has insistently made a damned nuisance of itself, harassing the troops that guard the excavation efforts on the Plains of Eidolon, and cutting wide swaths through Vay Hek’s precious Ghouls, newly emerged from the earth, before they even have a _chance_ to make their war on Cetus.

He has petitioned the Worm Queen herself, and she has promised him an assassin of his own. She has not promised him where or when her assassin will strike, but she _has_ promised that when they do, if the Tenno falls and Vay Hek delivers her the corpse she so craves—then he will have whatsoever of her favours he could ever ask, be repaid a thousand times over. He will have forces enough to storm Cetus and ravage its people, and to topple the Unum tower into Mer-Sah Bay, so that the blood of the Ostron will run red to the shores, mingling with the Temple Kuva as it floats on the surface of the sea, to be harvested for the glory of the Grineer.

But it all begins with the bullet meant to kill the Tenno, the _real_ Tenno, the demon child that hides behind the warframe.


	3. Chapter 3

“We should get back,” the Operator says, though he doesn’t move from where he sits, perched atop a rock at the edge of the lake, staring out over the water. “Night soon,” he adds distantly, as though this isn’t clear by the light of the setting sun, and as the waters of the lake begin to flicker with soft hints of magnetism. Soon the sun will set, and the Teralyst will rise.

The Operator is _obsessed_ by the Teralyst.

And, considering what became of the Lotus, it’s not as though this isn’t understandable.

They have spent enough time in the Plains by now, that the Sentient who roams across them no longer holds any terror for the Operator. Umbra was made in the days of the Old War, and will always be wary of anything that came from beyond the Void. But while he moves with a will of his own, his will is not to leave the child by the lakeshore, and he would not, even if the boy were to sit there the whole night through. If the Sentient rising from the waters happened across the pair, it would find them a worthy partnership, and equal to whatever wrath it could raise against them. It would hardly be the first time the Tenno and his chosen warframe have shattered the old specter, but the beast has no memory with which to learn a lesson.

But more likely the Operator will merely sit and watch, as a pillar of ghostly blue light stretches out from the lake, and the Teralyst materializes, to commence its lonely search once more.

It’s hard to say if the Plains have been good for him; for the Operator. They return here so often, lately, it seems as though they almost shouldn’t bother to leave. Some nights, they just don’t. Once they stayed for a stretch of a full week, as the Ostron measure time, seven full turns of the Earth beneath their feet. Back aboard the Orbiter, the Cephalon had dithered and fretted and finally shed the semblance of the long-absent Lotus, to pointedly ask when the Operator meant to return to the ship.

The work here has given him purpose, surely. Konzu of the Ostron has been thrilled and delighted each time Umbra appears wordlessly before him, awaiting another bounty. From within their transference link, the Operator always glows at the praise the old man lavishes upon him, with each completed conract. He craves direction, but equally he craves encouragement, approval. Konzu doesn’t know it, but the Tenno is intensely fond of him. All he sees is the towering warframe who takes his contracts, and not the boy who would do—and _does_ —absolutely anything he asks.

He’s caught the attention of the Quills, as well. Up a weed choked stone pathway to an old Orokin chamber, which had only opened when the Operator had stepped out to examine it more closely. The spike of transference energy had activated the Agkani stone that stood sentinel at the door, and he had vanished inside. For hours. It had been dusk then, too. And it had been nearing dawn before the stone doors had slid open once more, and the Operator had reappeared. Another warframe would’ve stood, waiting mindlessly in the doorway, empty and still. Umbra had done so purely on strength of discipline, his hand never leaving the blade at his side.

He dislikes the Quills. The Quills had laid a task upon the Operator, to venture out into the plains at night, and to test his strength and the strength of his warframe against the sentient that haunted valley and hill, roaming blindly across the landscape. They had armed him, worse still, with a weapon unlike any from even the Orokin Era, within Umbra’s memory. Some devilish device that focused and channeled the strength of the void from within a child, still barely old enough to control it. And then they had turned the boy loose, and Umbra along with him, in pursuit of a mindless titan.

The first time they had been beaten, soundly. A backhanded blow from the creature had been enough to send the boy flying, hurt him and startled him badly enough that he hadn’t been able to maintain transference, knocked all the way back into the Somatic Link aboard the Orbiter. After that, the link between Tenno and warframe had grown staticky and distorted, a muddied connection that left Umbra feeling drunk and disoriented as the Operator had tried and failed to reassert control. And faced with a giant against whom he was all but powerless, the warrior had fled, not only from the plains and their eidolon, but from Earth itself, as the Liset swooped down from the skies above to provide his escape.

Aboard the ship, after such an ignomious defeat, the Operator had sulked for hours, storming around the Orbiter in a fit of sullen rage. Ordis had finally coaxed him back into the Somatic Link, the cradle he’s since outgrown, like a toddler put to bed after a tantrum. They had drifted silently above the surface of the Earth for a while after that.

When Umbra had awoken next, it had been to return to the planet’s surface, back to Cetus and Onkko, and then out onto the Plains of Eidolon with the fall of dusk once again.

But this time the boy had grown cunning, had learned from the last encounter, brief and disastrous though it had been. No longer headstrong and impetuous, he had been counseled to watch and wait and learn, and did so. Stalking the Eidolon, shadowing its movements across the plains, and dispatching the smaller sentients that trailed behind in its wake, practicing, Getting a feel for the new weapon he’d been given. Growing stronger, gradually, within the confines of a gravity meant for beings of his size and shape, roaming over hill and dale across the rocky expanse of the plains. Umbra, as grudgingly as he undertook the task they had been set, had to concede a certain pride in the way the Operator had devoted himself to the hunt; in the way his mind, clearly hungry for some new challenge, rose to meet the demand for strategy and tactics and a warrior’s discipline.

And Umbra can respect that.

On the lakeshore, as night falls, he waits and watches, to see what the Operator will do as the Teralyst rises from the depths of the lake once again.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“We should get back,” the Operator repeats, and though his voice is far away and distant and his gaze remains fixed on the sentient, he rouses himself from the fixation to devote his attention elsewhere.

He stands and stretches, and the last thing he says before he fades back into transference and joins Umbra’s awareness within the warframe they share, “Konzu has a job for us in the morning.”

* * *

It will be a trap, but the Tenno is not to know that.

When the Ghouls rise in the plains again, breaking through the surface, freshly putrid and reeking of new decay, Streel Meridian—Cressa Tal herself—will be tempted into Cetus by the suggestion that one of these monstrosities could somehow still have a mind, and that that mind could turn towards freedom, towards defection. She will bring with her her most trusted lieutenants, and she will find a guide in one of the Tenno, formidable and few as they are, familiar to and recommended by the head of the Ostron in Cetus.

Onkko will watch as Konzu sends the Tenno on to his doom. And even now, as he sees myriad probable futures winding out into the oncoming distance, he wonders (wondered and will wonder) why the Unum could not have chosen a path that would spare the child any further pain.

But the will and the ways of the Unum are mysterious, and if the all-seeing Unum has bound the child to this path, then its course must be followed, inevitably, to its conclusion.


	4. Chapter 4

 

At the edge of town, in the shelter of one of the cliffs that shoulder up around the Ostron settlement and beneath a sky of brilliant stars, the Operator settles down for the night.

Beneath a little lean-to of sticks propping up a sheet of rough canvas that he’s cribbed and cobbled together, he rolls out a surprisingly plush woven rug striped in blue and white, and gets comfortable. It’s nothing like the robust and sturdy structures that the Ostron call their homes, but it keeps the weather off him and blocks some of the wind. There’s no shutting out the sound of the Teralyst, roaming the plains beyond the gate, but even this is distant, and drowned out by the endless, comforting chatter of the bustling Ostron market. Umbra stands guard, impassive, and will until dawn.

On Earth, in Cetus, the Operator sleeps. _Really_ sleeps, not the fitful voidbound slumber of the Somatic Link, but the sleep of a boy who’s spent the day, alive and thriving, in the fresh air of a planet that was meant to sustain life, even if the bulk of it has been poisoned into uninhabitability. When they stay the night in Cetus, even if they stay well away from the Ostron and the Tenno stays cautiously hidden from anyone but the Quills—there’s still something about seeing him drowse beneath the stars, breathing free air and hearing the nightwind rustle through the long grasses—somehow he seems less alone.

Tonight, the Tenno lies flat on his back with his hands behind his head, and he’s nudged the woven rug so it’s angled out from beneath the lean-to. His gaze fixes on Lua, overhead, and when he speaks, there’s no one but Umbra to hear him.

“The Ostron say that Lua changed the seas. Before—before _she_ brought it out of the Void, they say the seas were still. They didn’t change. Now they rise and fall, like their legends say they used to, because of Lua. When it…when it happened, it happened all at once, for the first time in longer than anyone could remember. The ocean rose and they weren’t expecting it. The butchers and flensers that strip the flesh from the temple used to work,” at this the boy lifts a hand, gestures vaguely towards the shore, “—they used to work right out in the bay, right around the foot of the temple. They did it all right close, it was faster, easier. When the water rose, it washed it all away. All their hard work. All those people. Killed dozens of them as they tried to run to shore, then washed their bodies up on the beach.”

It is perhaps an advantage of the Somatic link that the Operator isn’t alone with his thoughts when cloistered inside it. He drifts, dreaming, in the void, untroubled by the troublesome questions of the wider universe. Like what happened to the Ostron of Cetus when Lua returned to the skies above the Earth.

The bitterness in his voice is terrible, too old and dark for the voice of a child, as he says, “ _She_ didn’t care. She never told me how it happened, what it would do. She _had_ to know, she always knew _everything_. And she just did it anyway. She drowned them all in the Mer-sah Bay. To bring the Tenno out of the void.”

If she hadn’t, Lua would have been destroyed, torn apart in the void, and the Tenno along with it. The boy omits this fundamental truth, that he wouldn’t even be here to think these thoughts, if the Lotus hadn’t called for him to pull Lua from the void and awaken the dreamers within. Without Transference flowing between them, standing away and apart, Umbra has no means to make this truth clear—but he has the sense that the boy doesn’t want to be told, anyway. He’s lapsed into silence, staring up at the moon. Seconds flow slowly into a long minute. Far away, the sentient howls. Umbra wonders briefly if the boy has fallen asleep.

But then, from the near silence, a child’s voice softly asks, tenative, as though he’s afraid of the answer— “Do you think they’d hate me if they knew?”

And even if the Operator were to reach out and touch him, reestablish the link between them into the space that both their minds share—Umbra would have no answer.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Cressa Tal comes from the west, with dawn and with an entourage, descending aboard a pirated Dargyn, a herald before the arrival of a stolen Ogma, all the way from Iron Wake.

Even forewarned as they have been about the arrival of Steel Meridian, as the Grineer ships land, the citizens of Cetus still mutter and grumble in the streets. They make warding gestures and mutter little prayers to their silent patron, petitions to the Unum, all with the vague, harried tone of “ _Can you_ believe _this shit, O most holy and transcendent Unum? Off-worlders, pah!_ “

The Unum remains resolutely silent, at least as far as the citizens of Cetus are concerned, because with Cressa Tal’s arrival, events proceed along the most probable path, just as anticipated.

Cressa Tal is an optimist, after a fashion. A deserter herself, and having surrounded herself with other deserters, she has a natural inclination to put her faith in the innate potential within any average Grineer foot soldier towards defection. She also knows the numbers better than almost anyone else. It’s a miniscule chance that a Grineer clone will emerge with the necessary genetic flaws to overcome compulsive obedience to the Grineer Queens, meticulously bred into the entire race. It’s an infinitesimally smaller chance that this one in a million flaw won’t itself be stifled by the fanatical military conditioning that each soldier undergoes. And even with both those requirements fulfilled, the odds that Steel Meridian manages to find and rescue potential defectives—defectors—are slim. Almost nil.

Still. If Steel Meridian doesn’t flourish, it _does_ grow. And what ex-Grineer do find their way into Cressa Tal’s command are those best primed and equipped to oppose the ranks they left behind, having seen them from the inside before coming to understand what they were. It’s why simple word of mouth is among the greatest weapons Cressa Tal wields, and why when one of her ships flies over the Plains of Eidolon, it doesn’t drop ordnance, but a fluttering rain of propaganda, simple fliers that will be scorned by the vast majority of Grineer they reach, trampled into the mud or shredded by clumsy hands, treated like worthless trash, scattered to the winds.

But with every missive exists that tiny glimmer of a fraction of a chance that it might reach the right soldier, might turn the right head, and resonate. That the seed of something beyond virtual slavery to the Twin Queens might find somewhere to root and germinate and grow, flourishing into full-blown defection. To defect from the Grineer is to cease to _be_ Grineer—to reject one of the core tenets of what goes beyond racial identity, coded instead into the very fabric of Grineer existence.

For Steel Meridian, it’s a game played by the law of averages. Grineer are cloned by the million, batches upon batches of soldiers churned out of Tyl Regor’s tubes and Vay Hek’s charnel pits. Across the vast numbers of clones produced, even 1% genetic incompatibility results in ten thousand viable candidates for defection.

It’s a cruel irony that the less effort and care is taken with a batch of clones, the more likely there will be errors, flaws. The sorts of genetic mishaps that lead to defectives, defections.

Konzu waits at the outskirts of town, having brokered the deal that’s brought Cressa Tal to Cetus. Her Ogma will arrive laden down with goods plundered from across the system, for Ostron merchants to take and ply in trade. In exchange, Konzu has promised intel and assistance, as regards the sudden, worrying increase in Ghouls in the Plains of Eidolon.

“Ai-yo! Swazdo-lah!” Konzu calls, waving vigorously to the General, as she jumps nimbly down from the Dargyn, newly landed at the outskirts of town. She claps her pilot briefly on the shoulder as he goes about proper landing procedure, and sketches a little mock salute in Konzu’s direction.

At the old man’s elbow stands the Tenno he has contracted to assist Cressa Tal, towering head and shoulders taller than Konzu is himself. There’s enough familiarity between them by now that Konzu chuckles and lowers his voice, knocking an elbow lightly against the warframe’s torso, as he comments, “Knows how to make an entrance, eh? You want word-one proof that this Steel Meridian isn’t the same as the Grineer we gotta deal with every long day and longer night—well, I will I tell you this, that word is _style_.”

He grunts softly to himself, and his voice drops lower still, so that Umbra cocks his head slightly, because the Operator is interested to hear, as Konzu goes on, “She’s a stylish fool, though, if she thinks she’s going to find a ghoul to turn. Still. Her merch is good and her credits are better, and it does not do for the Ostron to be rude to their neighbours. You take her out and show her the way things are, Killer. Ghouls are born like death and death is all they’re good for. If Cressa Tal wants to learn the hard way, well, teach her the lesson in putrid blood and Tenno steel, my friend.”

In answer, Umbra's thumb presses against the hilt of his Nikana, and there's the click of the blade loosening in its sheath. Konzu chuckles darkly again, before trotting forward to extend the General his greetings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (oh, btw, I have a tumblr for my assorted warframe antics, if that's of interest to anybody? I honestly didn't know how much readership to expect from the warframe fandom, this was mostly gonnna be just a personal piece about a story I've had in mind for a long time. I'm still sort of just starting it out, I mostly use it as a place to collect screenshots because I have a captura addiction. you might've noticed. anyway! simple-nexus.tumblr.com and thanks for reading!)


	6. Chapter 6

Cressa Tal is loud, brash, one-eyed and violent, but there’s an undeniable charisma to her. She’d hopped down from her dargyn, bluff and friendly, and shaken Konzu’s hand with a resolute smack of flesh against flesh. With a voice like the rasp of steel across stone, she’d exchanged diplomatic pleasantries with the leader of the Ostron, and then made it clear that she’d brought a small squad, descending in the Ogma landing behind her, and wanted to get straight to business. The sun was already well up, advancing towards noon and the high heat of midday, and Konzu had of course led her straight to the gates, offering information and advice as they went, and finally introducing the Tenno trailing obediently behind him.

“This, here, _this_ is our most esteemed _surah_ , an off-worlder of distinction and _value_.” Included in this statement had been the implication that off-worlders are otherwise not worth the dirt they stand upon. This time the flesh of Konzu’s palm had clapped against the bioengineered steel of Umbra’s shoulder, and inwardly the Operator had been all aglow with pleasure at the old man’s praise. “A higher hired gun you shall not find, General. _This_ one strips my bounty board bare whenever they come through town, always a joy and a delight to be graced by the presence of a Tenno in Cetus. If you need a guide to the plains who has their steel ready about them, no off-worlder will serve you better.”

“Tenno,” at this the General had turned to address Umbra, and knows enough about the Tenno not to expect a response beyond the brief nod she receives. “Good to have you. There’s a lot of people wouldn’t respect what we’re doing here.” Included in _this_ statement is the implication that she’s aware that Konzu is one of them. “Respect isn’t why we do it.”

And then they’d been off, out the gates and into the plains.

It’s a bright, brilliant day. It’s late in the earth’s orbital period in this part of the world, and the axial tilt of the planet means there’s a chill in the air, even with the sun high overhead. In the warmer months, with the sun that much hotter as it beats down upon the earth, the reek of the burial grounds seem to waft on every breeze, a charnal stench of decay. Vay Hek has been busier than usual, though, and even though the air is cool, there’s still the faintest suggestion of putrefaction in the air. It bodes ill, though no one says so, and the Tenno is allowed to lead the way out onto the plains.

Cressa Tal has brought only two squadmates and it’s a point firmly in her favour that she leads the squad herself. All three are armed to the teeth, resolutely hopeful about what they may find, but grimly realistic about the probability of what they’ll need to do with any ghouls they encounter. Cressa herself carries a shotgun of Grineer manufacture, but retooled, and painted a gleaming, defiant white. She is bound and determined to see what the burial grounds are like, and in what state the ghouls emerge. The General hopes to find them shambling and disoriented, seeking orders and direction from other Grineer. If she can find a likely site, she hopes to pass herself off as a commander, and to shepherd a contigent of ghouls away, in an attempt to see how tractable they are, whether their minds can be twisted away and torn free from their flawed genetic conditioning.

She’s chosen only two of her own soldiers to accompany her, a sniper and a medic. The medic to evalutate the physical state of the ghouls as they emerge, and determine their viability if given properly supportive treatment and care. The sniper to perch high above and far away from the actual encounter, and to intervene only at a specifically given signal. One of them is not who Cressa Tal believes them to be, because Steel Meridian’s greatest strength is equally its greatest weakness—they will accept any Grineer troop seeking to defect and fold them into their own ranks.

And while Grineer are purpose-built, cloned to specifications particular to their function, so that a sniper will always look like a sniper, a gunner will always look like a gunner, and a grunt will always look like a grunt—a Kuva assassin will never look like a Kuva assassin.

Plucked from their cloning vat before standard conditioning could even begin, with their entire psyche stripped torturously bare in the earliest hours of their existence, reprogrammed into an agent of the Queens’ agenda, it takes a matter of weeks rather than days to turn an average Grineer foot soldier into more than a simple blunt instrument, meant to be shoved onto the battlefield and given only the barest of orders. Deep within the Kuva fortress, the Grineer Queens have perfected the means to unwrite the same code they’ve written into their vast armies of soldiers, and to create the Kuva Elite—assassins, seeded out into the galaxy in the guise of ordinary Grineer, to be called upon when they are needed and to strike where no one would expect.

Including this one, armed with the weapon and the knowledge necessary to take revenge for a dead Queen. And hiding, up until the crucial moment, in plain sight. Until the Tenno is foolish enough to show their true face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> excuse the lack of a decent screenshot! it is terribly late where I am. I will perhaps have one for you later. Thanks for reading <3

Loyal to Konzu and borrowed as he has been into the General’s command, the Tenno has scouted obediently ahead, as ordered, intent upon a likely spot in the plains, a flat, broad section of ground towards the south end of Gara Toht lake, where ghouls are often seeded. When the small Steel Meridian squad join the warframe where it waits at the crest of a hill overlooking the burial ground, Cressa Tal flicks a little salute off her temple in acknowledgement, and goes about giving the orders.

Her orders for the Tenno are to be well out of eyeshot of the burial site, so as not to send the ghouls into an immediate frenzy of murder. It’s her hope that the sight of fellow Grineer will be enough to temper their initial impulses, in this first attempt at reconnaissance.

Umbra leaves with nothing more than a nod of understanding, and sets his sights on a particular spot on the far side of the lake, just far enough to be out of sight of the burial ground itself. He sets off at a tireless, biomechanical sprint, engineered into perfect efficiency. Of his own accord he would just run, on the straightest, simplest path, but with the Operator, there’s an insatiable urge to leap and bound and shoot like a bullet across the craggy landscape, and he does so, indulgent of the boy’s desires.

_I like Cressa Tal._

There’s a note of rebellion in the thought as it drifts into Umbra’s awareness, as though the Operator is breaking some unspoken rule by taking such a shine to the Steel Meridian’s leader. Within Transference, the Operator’s awareness melds with Umbra’s own, and everything the Tenno knows about the wider universe, his warframe knows, too. Including everything about Steel Meridian and Cressa Tal.

This impression is generally favourable—pun unintended—and considers the work the Steel Meridian do in the system at large. Above all, their rallying cry is justice, their cause the defense of the weak and the persecuted. The good they do is selfless, without ulterior motive or hidden agenda, and their reputation is earned and deserved. It’s hard not to be impressed by Steel Meridian, and by Cressa Tal by extension.

Umbra’s own thoughts are wordless, more of a suite of concepts and images, and he conveys his own guarded esteem for Cressa Tal—a leader, bold and charismatic, and unburdened by the pretensions that keep the Grineer high command separated from the rest of their troops.

_But Konzu’s right. She won’t find any ghouls to turn, and even if she does, they’re not made to last; they’re shock troops. Tactically they’re just cannon fodder. They’re the genetic dregs of whatever doesn’t make it into proper Grineer troops, they’re biologically dysfunctional from the moment they pop out of the ground. Even if she did bring any back, they’d just molder away and die on her._

It’s perhaps an easier idea to express in pure concept than in words, that a life lived in freedom, however short, must be better than a life lived in virtual slavery. Umbra binds this thought in gentle wisdom, the sort reserved exclusively for the silent, internal dialogue of Transference, and nudges it in the Operator’s direction.

 _Isn’t it sad, though? Isn’t it worse, that just when they realize they don’t_ have _to be Grineer, they’ll also realize that the Grineer made them just to die? That they’re dying as soon as they first come alive? Seems kinder to kill them._

Umbra makes clear his belief that they are probably going to be killing a great many ghouls today, but tempers the reality with the respect he has for Cressa Tal’s willingness to try. The world blurs past as the warframe runs, his steps falling light and swift as he moves from earth to stone, as the lakeshore grows more rough and rugged. They’re a good five hundred meters from the burial site—far enough not to be immediately visible to any newly risen, but near enough to respond quickly if summoned.

By the time they reach the appointed destination, the Operator has grown restless within Transference. All the time he’s spent on Earth has given him a certain proclivity for being planetside, in the flesh, even if it’s somewhat unwise for the Tenno to make their true nature widely known. They’re far enough away that Cressa Tal and company can’t see them. Any patrolling Grineer who happen their way won’t live to tell the tale of who they saw. There’s a flare of energy, the staticky transfer of a being through the Void, and as Umbra comes to a halt at the edge of the lakeshore, the Operator materializes into physical existence.

It’s always a little jarring just how _young_ the boy looks, especially in the cold, clear light of day. Younger than Isaah. In the time they’ve spent on Earth, in the time he’s spent with the Quills, the Tenno has armed and armoured himself in bits and pieces of their homely, home-brewed tech, all with queer Ostron names—Anspatha and Lohrin, Rahn and Granmu, Vahd and Ceno. Even kitted out in a mishmash of vaguely warlike gear, there’s no disguising the youth of his features, the slightness of his frame. Still a child, caught at the very edge of beginning to grow up—but held back, frozen, ageless in time.

And now he speaks aloud as he continues the thought he’d had, the discussion he and Umbra had been having silently, now held in the open air. His voice has a surprising depth to it when he’s pensive, but Umbra is still familiar with the way it can rise into a petulant whine when he’s frustrated or angry. But for now he’s thoughtful, and his voice is no louder than the lap of the water against the lakeshore. “I wonder what it’s like for Ghouls to wake up,” he muses idly. “I guess it’s more like being born, maybe.”

The Tenno steps lightly across the slab of stone at the edge of the lakeshore, then stops and stretches, rolling his shoulders and breathing deeply. He stares out over the water, lapsed into silence again. The late afternoon light glimmers off the surface of the lake, and at this point in the year, the grasses that carpet the plains are a softly gleaming gold, the foliage a riot of sienna and umber, carmine and copper. It’s undeniably beautiful, and there’s a melancholy softness to the Tenno’s voice, when he speaks again, “There are worse places to get born, I guess. Worse places to live, even if it’s only for a little while. It’s amazing here. It’s beautiful. I wonder if they even notice.”

Within Transference, not _everything_ flows between them. Umbra is unlike the other warframes, and there are thoughts and feelings—memories—for the Operator to share. The link between their minds was clumsy, at first, and more than either could handle would bleed both ways. For the first little while, it was agony, memories bubbling unhindered to the surface, blurring together into nightmares.

The Tenno, being what he is, was better at controlling the flow, better at holding himself back and walling himself off—but in those first few attempts at Transference, there had been flashes of a deep, incredible darkness. Insanity and terror and pain, grief and horror and unimaginable loss. Umbra had glimpsed this only once or twice before the Tenno had neatly walled it away inside himself, locking away his demons just the same as Margulis had, once, though all Umbra really knows of Margulis is her name, and that it’s only one of several the Tenno associates with her. The Lotus. Natah. Whoever she was (or will be) remains to be seen. She weighs too heavily on the Tenno’s thoughts for him to hide her away, she exists like the background radiation of his mind. Talking of birth, it’s hard to imagine he isn’t thinking of the closest thing he can remember to a mother.

Umbra stands a few paces back, giving the boy his space. One hand rests, as ever, on the hilt of Skiajati at his side. Without Transference, all he has is what the Operator says. And sometimes that’s a great deal more than what passes between them when their minds are linked together. So when the Tenno speaks, Umbra listens. Perhaps more intently than he should. The Operator’s voice is soft enough to get caught on the wind as he goes on—

“When _I_ woke up, I didn’t even know what I _was_. She was the one who told me, and why…why wouldn’t I believe her? _She_ wasn’t different, _I_ was different, nothing about _her_ had changed. It’s just that I woke up. And…and I did what she said, because that was all I’d ever done. I just kept doing as she said, even…even _after_ she _left_. Even…even with everything I learned about her, I still—I _still_ —“

He trails off, then, and the catch in his voice becomes a break, and then the break in his voice becomes a soft sob. Umbra hears this, standing on the lakeshore, a few paces back. What he doesn’t hear is something he wouldn’t have heard, even if he hadn’t been listening so intently to the words of his Operator—because it comes from the other side of the lake. From the ridge where Cressa Tal has left her sniper, there’s the soft, metallic _click_ of a bullet, being locked into place within the barrel of a rifle.

What he hears next will be the gunshot that goes with it, as he watches the Tenno fall.


	8. Chapter 8

 

The rifle itself is unremarkable, nothing more than a retooled Vulkar. The Queen’s sniper has one shot, from where she’s hidden herself away above the burial grounds, where the traitor—the blasphemous _filth_ —Cressa Tal has told her to wait. But her sights are not fixed upon the burial ground, and instead her scope tracks across the opposite shore of the lake. She doesn’t have to wait long. The reports that have trickled back to the Kuva Fortress from Tusk troops on the ground in the Plains of Eidolon are true—and she watches, as the Tenno, the _real_ Tenno—materializes on the lakeshore.

Weapons of Orokin origin are all the more beautiful when held in Grineer hands, because the beauty of what is true and pure stands out sharply against what is ugly and corrupt.

The Worm Queen has not given her assassin an Orokin rifle, because in this instance, the gun matters far less than the bullet it fires. The bullet is a single bolt of Orokin making, an ancient piece of salvage from the security apparatus of some long forgotten tower, and meant to do so much more than just _kill_ the Tenno. The Tenno deserves so much more than simple death, for what he’s done.

The assassin has also been entrusted with a truth known to so few others; the truth of what has happened to the Twin Queens. It had been part of what broke her original conditioning—part of what makes what will follow so easy, though she knows that the truth must die with her. For the glory of the Grineer, so that her brothers and sisters can continue their conquest of the system without descending into utter despair, they must never know that their queen has been killed.

And _this_ is the monster who killed her queen. The sniper draws a shuddering breath at the sight of him, revulsion and hatred and horror at the sight of one of the demons that haunt the system, hidden away behind their vile warframes. She watches through her scope as he ambles to the water’s edge, talking to himself, for there’s no one else around to hear. The warframe behind him is still and empty, and she doesn’t spare it another thought as she fixes her crosshairs on the boy on the other shore.

From then it’s just a matter of priming her shot. The bullet she’s been given is less of a bullet and more like a crossbow bolt—if a crossbow bolt were an elegant, slender thing. Wondrous, golden, and perfect. It doesn’t fit down the barrel of her rifle, but has instead been slotted into the muzzle, where it will be ejected with the force of a regular bullet behind it. It felt almost strange to handle such an otherworldly object, curiously heavy for its size and somehow humming in her hands, as though waiting to come alive. And it will, after a fashion, once it finds its mark.

Across the lake, she lifts the rifle to her shoulder, takes careful deliberate aim. She murmurs to herself in the guttural, grating language of the Grineer, long perverted from whatever dialect it was cribbed together from—

“ _For my Queen._ “

Then she slowly exhales every ounce of her breath to steady herself.

And squeezes the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one had the pick of several screenshots, and perhaps in a slightly later chapter I will include a link to the ones I had to choose from, because I think they are Quite Interesting. but for now, for the next chapters, the set includes some spoilers, so I shall leave you in suspense.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ya'll will have to bear with me as I play a lil fast and loose with canonical lore versus the mechanics of gameplay versus my interpretation of the aforementioned versus the ultimate trump card of what just sounds good when I render it in prose. 
> 
>  
> 
> also please ignore the frankly impossible physics of the top screenshot, and consider instead that i loved the composition and imagery too much not to use it and therefore you get a bonus. huzzah!

 

It takes time for a bullet to travel. Not much, but enough. Just enough time and and just enough distance between the Tenno and the bolt meant to kill him that he’s lifted his head and taken half a step, turning back towards his warframe for some sort of reassurance or companionship or comfort, by the time it strikes.

And so the intended headshot catches him instead at the meatiest part of his shoulder, squarely in between clavicle and ribcage, and with enough force to knock him backwards and solidly off his feet. There’s a sharp, startled cry of pain, and the Operator hits the ground.

The fact that he makes it as far as the ground is what should give Umbra pause.

But instead the sound of the gunshot is what spurs the warframe into immediate action, because every other time the Operator has been caught out of Transference and injured—it hasn’t ever actually _harmed_ him, per se.  He _feels_ it, certainly, but the Tenno exist in a queer sort of halfway state, on the edge of the fold between the seen and unseen, the real and unreal, the waking and sleeping worlds. When the Tenno manifests himself into existence from the Somatic Link—it’s more like a projection.

A projection that demonstrably exists and can interact tangibly with the world around it—and all the tactile sensations therein—but which isn’t actually affected physically. It’s as though there’s a membrane, stretched between the twain halves of existence, and the Tenno have mastered the trick of pressing hard enough against one side of it to force the impression of themselves into reality, though never _quite_ passing through. Nothing pierces the veil in the other direction, either, the boundary between the worlds is impermeable by the conventional means available to most of the system. The Operator has caught more than a few bullets since mastering his capacity for Transference. But they’ve never actually _hit_ him, so much as just caused enough pain and shock to knock him neatly out of his projection, and snap him back into the reality of his own body, dreaming in the Somatic Link.

Not this time.

But Umbra doesn’t stop long enough to notice that something’s different. His response is that of a warrior—swift retaliation. The shot had come from the sniper across the lake, and when given cause, Umbra can clear a distance of a few hundred meters in mere moments, even when there’s the narrow, rocky depths of an entire lake in between him and his goal. A leap and a bound and a bounce off a convenient rock jutting up from the shallows, and he’s on the other shore, sprinting up the cliffside, where the very faintest trace of smoke still curls from the barrel of a sniper rifle.

The Operator is always at least little disoriented in the first few moments after being thrown bodily out of existence and back into the confines of the Orbiter and sometimes takes some time to recover and reassert himself within Transference—so Umbra doesn’t immediately notice the lack of the Tenno’s influence. Fixed and intent on his target, the only thing he’s aware of is the release of his blade from its sheath, the way the edge sings in the wind as it arcs towards the sniper on the cliffside, who makes not even the slightest move to defend herself.

Steel bites into the bastard alloy of her armor, snags for only the barest moment on her spine, and then cleaves her in half in an effortless spray of blood and gore. It’s not until after the assasin lies in two halves at his feet that Umbra knows her for the sniper who came with Cressa Tal, and not one of the Grineer who roam the plains. And though she’d known to hold her shot until the Operator manifested, she hadn’t known that she couldn’t possibly have done him any actual harm.

Umbra wonders at the Operator’s thoughts on this—whether it indicates a spy within Cressa Tal’s ranks, or the more sinister possibility that Steel Meridian has decided that the Tenno are a bane upon and a threat to the innocents of the system, and must be done away with—but there’s no answer, because there’s no Transference link between them. Umbra is alone within himself, and though this was true for centuries, he feels suddenly, strangely incomplete.

The warframe turns, then, to follow the same sightline the sniper had chosen from her vantage point on the cliff. Back towards the other shore, where he’d last seen the Tenno, falling backwards, presumably out of existence, back through the Void, and into the safety of the Orbiter high overhead.

There should be nothing and no one there. But in a moment of defiant impossibility, instead Umbra sees a small, dark figure, crumpled on the ground. Still upon the pale stone of the lakeshore, stark beneath the cold light of the autumn sun overhead, the Operator lies, alone, where he’d fallen.

And then, disturbed in their slumber by the same gunshot that summoned Umbra from where he waited, Cressa Tal’s Ghouls erupt from the ground at the foot of the cliff, alive and awake and genetically insane and howling their insistent desire for the violence and death they were born to deliver.


	10. Chapter 10

She’d known there was trouble the second she’d heard the gunshot. Gunshots are rarely an indicator of anything else, though this one in particular has caused such an enormous amount of trouble that Cressa Tal momentarily doubts her ability to get out of it.

The ground beneath her feet had rumbled slightly, and she’d had only moments to brace herself, before patches of disturbed earth had surged upwards, erupting open with force borne by terrible, fearsome strength—and the General and her medic had been abruptly surrounded by the festering stench and unrelenting screams of their mission objective, as ghouls begin to shoulder their way out of the charnel pit.

Something, obviously, has gone terribly, tremendously wrong. What exactly this is is not readily apparent, though from the corner of her eye Cressa catches a dark blur of movement from the opposite side of the lake, where she’d sent the Tenno to await further orders.

Stoic and wordless as the Tenno are, it’s hard to say whether or not they’d been expecting this. Konzu’s cynicism about the ghouls had been _very_ thinly veiled, but in Cressa’s experience with the Tenno, limited though it is, they’re impossible to read. Certainly, they’d done the job as assigned—but across the galaxy, they’re known as mercenaries, and they answer only the orders of their mysterious Lotus, when not taking whatever missions or assignments she offers, or fighting in whatever conflict catches their fancy, on whatever side most appeals. Whether they'll do a job is an imperfect reflection of what they believe about doing it.

Before she can determine where exactly the Tenno has gone, whether or not the warframe is about to come to her aid, as contracted, the choking reek of putrid gas starts to fume from the ground. She has to stifle a fit of coughing and fumble for the breathing apparatus clipped to the chest piece of her body armour, though the gas still stings relentlessly at her eyes and obscures her vision. Machine gun fire bursts from beside her as her medic placidly begins emptying a clip of ammo into the fray, and reflexively, the general brings her own shotgun up and into play, unloading two shells full of searing hot lead into the nearest ghoul.

This is, objectively, bad. Any prospect of negotiating with the ghouls has vanished, any thoughts of defection have turned towards the paramount priority of survival.

Abruptly, it gets worse.

From overhead, the severed upper half of her sniper sails over the edge of the cliff above the burial ground, and lands with a wet, unpleasant thud in the middle of the freshly turned earth. The scent of blood seems to drive the ghouls into a further frenzy, and Cressa whirls around, to stare up at the shadow on the clifftop. The Tenno stares down at her for one terrible, terrifying moment, still holding its bloodied blade—before turning away.

This raises more questions than it answers, and though she shouts after the warframe as it vanishes, her voice is muffled by the rebreather and drowned out by the shrieking clamour of violence around her, and another blast of her shotgun all but deafens her as it reverberates off the cliff face at her back. There are too many ghouls, and without their sniper for backup, they’ll be overwhelmed in only a minute or two more.

Her medic, who is not _only_ a medic, makes an executive decision at this point and seizes Cressa roughly by the scruff of the neck. He gives her a brief, ungentle shake that she understands to be a request of permission, and by way of assent, she claps him sharply, twice, on the chest plate.

And then they’re off, rocketing into the air with a fiery thrust of a sturdy old jetpack.

“Medic” is technically something of a misnomer for this particular agent, because the Grineer as an army and as a race do not employ medics, except at the very highest echelons. Even what passes for a doctor amongst the Grineer is more likely to harm than heal, and all in the name of building a better soldier. The average ground troops are easier to replace than to repair, and the closest thing to medical aid the average grunt can expect is a merciful spare bullet from a passing fellow soldier. Grineer Medics are unique to Steel Meridian, and the one Cressa Tal brought along with her was once a Hellion, before it had occured to him just how often he found himself shooting his comrades rather than watching them die, and how odd that it would make him hate himself so much. He’d found his way to Steel Meridian not long after that.

But he’d kept the jetpack, for obvious reasons, and now it carries him and his commander high into the air, and then with a throaty burst of fuel, across the water, to the dubious safety of the other shore.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, it's 3 AM and it took me way too long to figure out that I couldn't contrive a screenshot to do this one justice. alas.
> 
> edit: it's 4AM and I am STUBBORN.

 

 

If it had been fired from the rifle it was made for—

If the Quills hadn’t had the preternatural foresight to make their own armor available to him—

If the boy hadn’t turned, if the shot had hit its true mark—

—then the bolt would’ve punched a hole clean through the Tenno and embedded itself in the hillside behind him, and in so doing, would have torn a hole in reality itself. Would’ve opened a fissure between the waking world and the Void beyond it.

And the release of Transference energy upon the death of the Operator would’ve been enough to make a tiny tear into a gaping chasm, enough corrupting energy pouring through from the Void to obliterate the Plains of Eidolon in their entirety, and Cetus, and the Ostron, and the tower of the Unum in the Mer-Sah Bay.

But that hasn’t happened.

Yet, anyway.

The bolt has punctured the chest piece of the armour he wears, punched through fersteel alloy as though it’s not regularly proof against regular bullets, though it hasn’t traveled _quite_ far enough to exit through the back of the cuirass, and remains embedded firmly in the Operator’s shoulder. It hurts more than he can remember anything ever hurting, though he doesn’t know it quite yet.

The initial shock of the impact lasted only a moment, and what’s rendered him senseless at the water’s edge is the way the back of his skull had cracked sharply against stone when he hit the ground. He’s only unconscious for a few merciful minutes before he starts to drift vaguely back into awareness, not all at once, but piecemeal.

The scent of death on the wind from the newly active burial ground hits him first, uninhibited by the chill in the air. The stench is enough that he gasps reflexively, oxygen flooding to his brain and rousing him further and faster than he might otherwise want. He can hear screaming, gunfire. His eyes blink open against the unrelenting emptiness of the sky overhead and the brightness of the sun is near blinding after the oblivion of unawareness. It’s when he first tries to move, pulling his arm up to shield his eyes from the light, that the muscles of his chest twist against the bolt embedded in his shoulder, and agony reigns.

Voluntary movement ceases, his entire body arcs backwards and his newly drawn breath leaves him as he _screams_ , loud enough that it echoes, reverberating off the hills that rise around the lake.

Then his body goes limp on the ground again, his breathing grows ragged and harsh. Air seems to tear its way into suddenly unwilling lungs, pain and panic and fear render his voice into feeble, sobbing gasps.

The ground is hard and cold beneath him and the sky is an infinity of pitiless blue and every laboured breath fills his lungs with decay, as though he’s already dead and not just dying. Apparently of its own accord, because the Operator certainly can’t muster the coherence or coordination to do so, his other hand fumbles weakly towards his shoulder, and gloved fingertips brush against something straight and smooth and hard. Touching it hurts, unimaginably, even worse than before, and he nearly blacks out again at the pulse of sheer agony. He manages to tilt his head and focus his gaze for just long enough to catch the gleam of Orokin gold, two or three inches protruding from his shoulder, before his vision blurs and his eyes fall closed against the sting of tears.

Then Umbra’s there.

And it must be relief he feels, though everything is currently too terrible for the Operator to conceive of feeling anything that isn’t pain or terror. His warframe looms over him, his bulk obscuring the blue of the sky, his shadow dimming the sun. When the weight of his hand comes to rest on the Operator’s chest, it falls so heavily against his breastbone that for a moment the Operator isn’t sure if it’s a gesture of comfort or restraint. He blinks his eyes open again and he stares numbly upward, feels Umbra’s eyeless gaze poring over him, but can’t understand the wordless sense of urgency. The hand against his chest gives him the slightest shove, shakes him insistently, and he whimpers in protest.

And then he understands.

He feels nothing. At the point of contact between them, where Umbra’s hand lies insistently over his heart—this beats in his chest like a caged bird, a frantic arrhythmia—there’s no spark of Transference energy, no familiar flow of connection, nothing. Even when he tries, mustering up the will to drift out of the world and back into the safety of the Void—nothing happens. He’s been trapped, pinned neatly to the fold between two worlds, unable to move between them.

For just a moment, that thought is even worse than the pain.

“I can’t—“ he protests weakly, and feels the desperate urge to apologize, because he _should_ be able to do this. He tries again, but it’s like trying to flex someone else’s muscles or blink someone else’s eyes. The effort he tries to spend goes nowhere, does nothing. He doesn’t know why. “I…I d-don’t…m’sorry…”

There’s no warmth in Umbra’s touch, but as the pressure of his hand leaves the Operator’s chest, somehow it still feels like ice water rushes through his veins and he shudders bodily, fails to stifle a sob. Only a moment later, strong, infinitely gentle fingers carefully catch and cradle his face, and _this_ is a gesture meant in comfort, however briefly it lasts. For a moment there’s a connection of another kind, somehow deeper than Transference, between a fatherless child and a childless father, a wordless promise that nothing will be allowed to happen to the Operator.

And then from down the shore, a harsh, grating voice cries, “ _Tenno!_ “


	12. Chapter 12

The Tenno is not the warframe.

The _Tenno_ is a boy lying crumpled on the ground with a metal bolt sticking out of his shoulder and an expression twisted in fear and pain. The  _warframe_ is the metal behemoth crouching protectively over him, one hand on the Tenno’s chest, the other holding a blade nearly as long as the boy is tall, bared from its sheath and poised in warning before Steel Meridian can dare to come any closer.

Cressa stops a solid fifteen feet away, holds up a hand to keep her medic from surging past her. She’s already seen the speed with which the warframe can cross a span of distance, and she’s not looking to press her luck. It’s frankly a miracle that it hasn’t killed them both already.

While her medic has his Grakata raised where he stands behind her, a warding gesture to match the warrior opposing him, Cressa raises her own hands in an attempt at pacification. She doesn’t know where to look, and her gaze keeps flitting back and forth between the two figures on the lakeshore. While it seems deeply unwise to take her eyes off the warframe and its still bloodied blade, it’s almost impossible not to stare at the pair of gleaming golden eyes that fix upon her.

Ever since the moon reappeared in the skies above Earth—she’s heard the rumours, read the intelligence reports—the Tenno had brought Lua back from the Void, for no reason anyone could readily discern. Possibly just as a display of their power within the System, a message to the other powers that be, a reminder of the legacy the Orokin left behind.

She’s even caught the whispers from the most secretive of backchannels that one of the mysterious Tenno—the _true_ Tenno—has killed one of the Grineer Queens, though that seems almost too preposterous to believe. The Grineer would have fallen into absolute disarray with the death of one of their Queens. These same whispers state that, as though their warframes aren’t enough, the Tenno themselves are actually formless demons from beyond the Void, beings of terrible power and an inhuman depth of cruelty, ghosts created by the Orokin to haunt the System long after their demise. This is about as credible as the notion that one of them has assassinated one of the Queens.

And Cressa Tal has never heard any of these rumours confirmed, because all she’s known since the rumours started there’s more to the Tenno than just what seems to be.

Apparently this is it.

But then, there must be something more to the warframe, too, because this one acts of its own accord, with no apparent input or direction. It hasn’t moved from where it stands guard over its…owner? Master? Pilot? There’s still too much ambiguity here for Cressa to be sure what the nature of the relationship is between Tenno and warframe, but she knows the warframe will be the one to kill her if she makes any sudden moves; if she can’t make it clear that while what’s happened here might’ve been her fault, she had no idea it _would_ happen, and would’ve prevented it if she had; would’ve caught the bullet herself rather than let it strike an ally.

“Tenno,” Cressa Tal says again, softly this time, and addressing the boy. Across the lake, not nearly far enough away for comfort, the sounds of the newly awakened and undispatched ghouls still carry on the breeze. She still has her shotgun slung from a strap over her shoulder, and—very deliberately, with slow, careful movements—she shrugs this off and tosses it aside. Now she holds her hands up in a gesture of surrender and takes a steadying breath.

“One of mine’s done this to you, and that wasn’t ever something I considered possible,” she says, swallowing past the revulsion, horror at the thought of a traitor in her ranks. “She was a traitor. I didn’t know. I should’ve and I didn’t, and it won’t mean a damn thing for me to tell you I’m sorry, but it might make all the difference if you let me help you. You’re hurt, that much is plain, but you might’ve been _killed_ , and there’s nothing I could’ve done about _that_ but died for it.” Her gaze flickers once more to the warframe’s blade, and the hand clenched in fury around the hilt of it. “And I’m pretty sure I would’ve died for it.”

There’s no answer, but she has the impression that it’s moderately challenging for the Tenno to string a sentence together, with the amount of pain he’s in. Despite this, his gaze hasn’t wavered, and he still stares at her like he’s trying to parse her offer, like he needs to think it over.

“Let me help you,” she says again, insistent this time. “ _Please_. I can’t do anything else to make this right, Tenno, I can’t even answer how or why it happened. But I’ve got a medic with me, and maybe I don’t know from what the hell you are, but you’re bleeding the same colour any of my people would, so that’s a start. We’ll patch you up, get you back to Cetus. This whole thing’s a wash.”

At her elbow, responding to the unspoken command, her medic holsters his machine gun. With the same slow, deliberate movements, he retrieves his own pack, a medical kit, nudging it against Cressa’s shoulder. There’s a grunt, and then he speaks up, though she has to translate from the guttural, halfway growled language of the Grineer before she knows what he means to say, “ _The Tenno can tell the war engine to put its blade to my throat while tell my General how to proceed. We only wish to help._ “

It’s an excellent idea, and one she’s fairly sure will go over well with the warframe, at least, whose head has turned in response to the statement. She doesn’t think its understood, though, and that’s to her advantage as she translates, with one minor adjustment—

“Bring that big sword over here and point it at whatever you think is my most vital part,” Cressa announces, and bats away the offered med kit. “And my medic will get to work. One wrong move and you can run me through, but I _swear,_ we only want to help.”

Try though she might to train it out of them, there’s a natural hierarchy to the way the average Grineer soldier orders their understanding of reality, and to have a superior throw their life casually on the line is deeply antithetical to the way they move through the world. And so there’s a strangled noise of protest from her medic, but Cressa’s watching the Tenno, and she watches as he nods, weakly, then lifts his gaze to get his warframe’s attention.

“Umbra,” he says, and Cressa winces at the way pain chokes his voice, but she can’t help but admire the quiet strength in the Tenno, as he goes on, “I trust her. Let them help.”

There's a few moments of hesitation. But then the warframe, on that small, simple order, moves obediently aside.


End file.
